Broadcast communication system and method for providing users with information associated with a geographical area

#Nationally-oriented radio and television broadcast programming, such as national newscasts, major sporting events, motion picture presentations, and weekly entertainment programs, have been available for many years. However, such programming typically has been delivered to the consumer by way of a plurality of locally-situated broadcast facilities. For example, radio or television programs of national interest are often broadcast by way of many radio or television stations of local broadcast scope collectively forming a terrestrial wireless broadcast network. Each broadcast station may have an effective range of up to a hundred miles or more, depending on applicable governmental regulations, technical capabilities of the station, and other factors. Of course, each of these stations may also provide more locally-oriented programming, such as local newscasts and sporting events, of primary interest to consumers residing within the station broadcast area.

#In addition to normal programming, this infrastructure of networks in the United States also had been employed as part of the federal Emergency Broadcast System (EBS) starting in 1963, which was replaced beginning in 1994 with the current Emergency Alert System (EAS). EAS allows the transmission of messages of national importance under the guidance of the President of the United States, although the system has never been used officially for that purpose. However, EAS is quite often employed at a state and local level for transmission of weather bulletins, child abduction warnings (i.e., “AMBER alerts”), and other time-sensitive events of a local nature. With each of the broadcast stations typically servicing a localized area, the use of such stations for dissemination of locally-oriented EAS alerts and other information is advantageous, since local information generally is not provided to distant geographic areas unaffected by, or uninterested in, the alert.

#The development of cable television systems altered the broadcast landscape somewhat, as channels providing purely regional, national, or international programming began to be delivered alongside local television station signals to consumers connected to the system. Thus, even though each separate cable television system typically covers an operating area approximately equivalent to a local television station, providing weather alerts and other important local information to all users of the cable system became more problematic. More specifically, in order to provide geographically-specific information to the surrounding community, the information provided by the local television stations, and passed through by the cable system, had to be supplemented to address the situation in which a consumer was viewing a nationally-oriented channel instead of local programming. In response, cable operators have devised ways to provide the alert information through all of the channels it provides. For example, the cable operator temporarily may block all programming on all channels, or at least the regionally- and nationally-oriented channels, to provide the local alert directly by way of text delivery, audio delivery, or both on every channel. In addition, the information may direct the viewer to tune to a specific cable system channel to access more details regarding the alert.

#FIG. 1 is a flow diagram of a method according to an embodiment of the invention for providing information associated with a geographical area to users by way of broadcast communication receivers.

#FIG. 2 is a block diagram of a broadcast communication system according to an embodiment of the invention for providing information associated with a geographical area.

#FIG. 3 is a block diagram of a broadcast communication system according to another embodiment of the invention involving direct broadcast satellite communications.

#FIG. 1 provides a flow diagram of a method 100 for providing information associated with a geographical area to users by way of broadcast communication receivers. In the method 100, the information and an indication of the geographical area associated with the information is transmitted from a broadcast communication transmitter to the broadcast communication receivers (operation 102). The information and the indication of the geographical area are received in each of the broadcast communication receivers (operation 104). In each of the receivers, the indication of the geographical area is compared with a geographic code associated with, and stored within, the associated receiver (operation 106). Each receiver then relays the information to the user of the receiver if the geographic code indicates that the receiver is located within the geographical area (operation 108).

#Another embodiment, a broadcast communication system 200, is depicted in FIG. 2. The system 200 includes a broadcast communication transmitter 202 and a plurality of broadcast communication receivers 204. The broadcast communication transmitter 202 is configured to transmit information associated with a geographical area and an indication of the geographical area. Each of the broadcast communication receivers 204 is configured to receive the information and the indication of the geographical area from the broadcast transmitter 202. Further, each of the receivers 204 is configured to compare the indication of the geographical area with a geographic code 205 associated with, and stored within, the associated receiver 204. For each receiver 204, if the geographic code 205 indicates that the receiver 204 is located within the geographical area, the receiver 204 is configured to relay the information to a user 206 associated with the receiver 204. Each broadcast communication receiver 204 represents yet another separate embodiment of the invention.

#Another embodiment of the invention—a satellite communication system 300—is depicted in the block diagram of FIG. 3. Generally, the system 300 includes a satellite communication transmitter 301 residing on a satellite, and a plurality of satellite communication receivers 304. Only one of the receivers 304 is shown explicitly in FIG. 3 to simplify the following discussion. One particular term often used for such a receiver 304 is a “set-top box,” although other terms referencing the receiver 304 have also been utilized. While the following discussion focuses exclusively on embodiments of the invention within the context of satellite broadcast transmitters and receivers, equipment involved in the reception of other forms of communication, such as various types of wireline and wireless communication, may also benefit from application of the embodiments discussed below. In addition, the satellite communication receiver 304 represents just one particular example of such a receiver; many variations of the configuration discussed below are possible while still benefiting from various aspects of the embodiments discussed herein.